Something I Can Never Have
by hummer246
Summary: Chapter 1 is the revised story of Say Something.. This is story 2 in the iPod Series...
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So I'm a huge R/S ff lurker and I heard this song and thought it was perfect for them as a quasi-couple…

A/N 2: A shout out LilyGhost and the great Beta ShelSueD! Don't own just borrowing for a little bit…

**MAJOR A/N: I decided that this WILL be a series and it's called: The iPod Series.. This is Story #1 and each story will be a song based fic.**

Say Something

Hummer246

She hit play on the iPod and listened as the recording began. When she had broken up with Joe eleven months ago she had thought that maybe she and Ranger would finally become the couple that their flirting and alley kisses promised they would be. But Ranger was in the wind for five months leaving her at loose ends. After thinking long and hard she asked Lester, Tank, and Ram to train her in Weapons, hand-to-hand, and take down techniques. She needed something to fill her time while Ranger was gone and she was alone.

Now, after six months of burning kisses and stealthy touches, the truth was becoming clear to her. He needed to step up make them real, or leave her alone. She couldn't do this back and forth BS anymore;it was slowly killing her.

She laid her head on her crossed arms and looked towards the kitchen while she sang along with the song that was her letter to him. She hoped he got what she was trying to express. She just could never get the words to flow like they did in her poetry.

It was an accident, this song. She had been picking up Mooner after he went FTA and her purse spilled all over the living room floor. Sally Sweet had come by looking for Dougie, who had told him of a sweet guitar that had "fallen" off the back of a truck. Sally had picked up her open journal and quickly read her poem about Ranger. Two days later, he'd called and asked her to come by because he had something for her.

He'd turned her poem into a song! To say she had been shocked was an understatement. Sally had even set it up with a friend of his that recorded demos and he talked her into singing it with him, playing the whole thing on piano.

This was her goodbye to the love of her life. It was the hardest thing she had ever done , leaving him.

She had received a job offer—believe it or not—from a bail bondsman in Nevada, which came with twice the percentage she was making now, medium to high bonds, and the chance to be in charge of her own crew. Basically, she was going to be calling the shots. But she found that Ranger's apathetic attitude towards their relationship —if you could even call it that—hampered her excitement about the job opportunity. But she was going anyway**;** she was moving across the United States to start over. No more Bombshell Bounty Hunter, no more Stephanie screw-ups, no more betting on blowing up cars.

Her life was starting over, and hopefully that meant she would be able to let Ranger go and meet a nice guy, with whom she could have an actual adult relationship. She dreamed of going out on dates and not as a distraction for a skip. She dreamed of going away on long weekends with a guy who cared about her because he wanted to get away to be together, not because someone was obsessed with her and turned into a stalker. Basically, she wanted what everyone else took for granted as a normal life.

Not whatever this was, this life that she had now. Stephanie finally figured that she wanted anything to change, she was the one who had to change it, and this was the first step was Ranger.

Ranger had gone to Boston to check on some —as he called them— minor problems and was supposed to be back on Friday. Her plane for Vegas was leaving at five-thirty in the morning on Tuesday. She figured if she hadn't heard from him by the following Friday that she had her answer.

Now the ball would be in his court. He could hit it back or let it go, and she had a feeling she knew what he was going to do with the ball and the racquet.

Ranger came in the door, tossed the keys in the dish on the table, and flipped through the mail that hadpiled up while he was gone. He threw all the junk mail in the trashcan and left what needed to go down to his office on the table. He turned to go into the kitchen and saw the iPod dock with a letter leaning against it on the bar.

He saw her handwriting on the envelope and the word _play_ on the iPod.

Ranger's gut was tight at the sight; he knew that nothing good was going to come of this letter. Their relationship, or whatever you wanted to call it, had been strained the last month or so. He knew that he needed to tell her that he wanted to take the next step and make this a real relationship and have her move in with him, but he just hadn't had the chance to sit her down and talk to her. Between Rangman, Steph's training, and both of their FTAs there just hadn't been a chance.

He pulled it out and read about how she had received the job offer over five months ago. How she had waited to see if he was going to turn whatever they had into a real relationship. She had given up and left this for him along with her new cell phone number in case he wanted to call her.

He saw the letter was dated over two weeks ago. He sat it down on the counter and pressed play on the iPod.

_Say something, I'm giving up on you  
I'll be the one, if you want me to  
Anywhere I would've followed you  
Say something, I'm giving up on you_

And I am feeling so small  
It was over my head  
I know nothing at all

And I will stumble and fall  
I'm still learning to love  
Just starting to crawl

Say something, I'm giving up on you  
I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you  
Anywhere I would've followed you  
Say something, I'm giving up on you

And I will swallow my pride  
You're the one that I love  
And I'm saying goodbye

Say something, I'm giving up on you  
And I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you  
And anywhere I would've followed you (Oh-oh-oh-oh)  
Say something, I'm giving up on you

Say something, I'm giving up on you  
Say something...

The End?

Say Something: A Great Big World featuring Christina Aguilera


	2. Something I Can Never Have

A/N: Continuation of Say Something… Shout outs to ShellSueD, LilyGhost, and SnapesGirl… You guys ROCK!

A/N 2: As always don't own them but kinda wish I did… haha Don't we ALL?

A/N 3: Story 2 in the **iPod Series**

Something I Can Never Have

_I still recall the taste of your tears.  
Echoing your voice just like the ringing in my ears.  
My favorite dreams of you still wash ashore.  
Scraping through my head 'till I don't want to sleep anymore._

You make this all go away.  
You make this all go away.  
I'm down to just one thing.  
And I'm starting to scare myself.  
You make this all go away.  
You make this all go away.  
I just want something.  
I just want something I can never have

You always were the one to show me how  
Back then I couldn't do the things that I can do now.  
This thing is slowly taking me apart.  
Grey would be the color if I had a heart.

Come on tell me

_[Chorus]___

In this place it seems like such a shame.  
Though it all looks different now,  
I know it's still the same  
Everywhere I look you're all I see.  
Just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be.

Come on tell me

_[Chorus]___

I just want something I can never have

Stephanie jolted herself awake from her dream. Her breathing was rapid and she blinked a few times to bring her bedroom into focus, showing her that she wasn't where she thought she had been. She threw her forearm over her eyes to hold in the tears as she took deep breaths to calm down.

She had been living in Vegas for two weeks now and hadn't heard anything from Ranger, not that she expected to. She knew that she had always loved him more than he loved her, no matter the flashes she thought she had seen from time to time in his eyes.

Stephanie looked over at the generic clock radio that was in her hotel room. It read 6:12 a.m. and she climbed from the sweat soaked bed and padded naked into the bathroom. She hadn't got comfortable with her body, she just didn't care anymore what she or anyone thought about her body. To her it was a tool for her job and that was it, an empty shell that went through the motions of living.

She unplugged her cellphone while squeezing the toothpaste onto her toothbrush, and hit speed dial one. It gave her a little jolt that she tamped down quickly thinking how that used to be Ranger's number. Now it was her new boss' number. In fact, all of her speed dial numbers were her new work related numbers. Friends and Family were now just listed in the contacts but they weren't the people that she called the most anymore. Yes, she still talked to everyone on almost a daily basis**;** she hadn't run away and not told anyone where she was going, just that she was moving for a better job.

The group that she called for work had changed.

Marcus Sheffield, the owner of Vegas Bonds and her new boss, answered on the second ring. Stephanie secretly thought he was a vampire because he always answered his phone, no matter the time of the day or night. But if that was the only requirement, she thought with half a laugh,maybe that made her one too.

"Your licenses arrived by Fed Ex last night so you can go shopping today. The Bellagio has accepted the requirements you had and you can move in tomorrow. Your safe will be delivered today to your new apartment, and they agreed on the dog as long as it's a working dog and not just a pet."

"Good. Anything else?" Stephanie's voice was brusque and to the point. Since the move, she had decided that her location wasn't the only thing she was going to change. Her whole life was different now.

She worked out in the gym every day for two hours, and she spent two hours at the gun range perfecting her sharp-shooting skills that Ram had started teaching her over a year ago. She now could use any gun and was never without at least three on her person, fully loaded and chambered and ready to go. She sparred with her second in command, Jonesy, and dropped him on his ass every time.

Her crew was six total, including her.

Jonesy, was 6'2, 250 lbs., white, brown on brown. In other words, brown hair, brown eyes, and came from one of the richest families in the world. The kind of family that counted their money in the billions, with a b. Next was Shadow, and yes, that was his actual name. He was the smallest at 5'11", 200 lbs., blue eyed blond. Next was Stark, who is in the running with Tank at 6'6", 300 lbs., and as Lula would say, "a big mountain of chocolate goodness," andshe would not be wrong. Last were the identical twins, Mike and Mark, at 6'3", black hair, green eyes and dimples. They were known as mirror twins, meaning that they were perfectly identical except everything is the mirror image; Mike was right handed, and Mark was left handed. Even their organs were opposite; Mark's heart was positioned to the right instead of the normal left position.

All five guys had been in some form of military branch and Spec Ops work. She knew that Jonesy and Shadow were spooks in a former life, and that Stark used to be Homeland Security and maybe still was in some capacity.

While Stephanie was getting into her uniform of khaki cargo pants and drab green tank with matching bra, she thought that the military and Spec Ops were a lot like the Mob, once you were in, you were in for life, and there was no real retirement from that life.

Her lips turned up as she looked around the generic bedroom she had been staying in for the past four days. She'd been switching motels every four days since she'd arrived just to make sure that any stalkers from her former life had not followed her out here. She was finally moving into a paid-for apartment. That was one of the things that had sold her on this job. An apartment was part of the deal and she had final choice in where and how it was set up,security-wise. She picked The Bellagio Casino and Hotel for its around-the-clock security and its spacious one bedroom condos, one of which she nowowned.

Stephanie tied her boots, hooked the Bluetooth over her left ear and grabbed her canvas messenger bag from the door handle before she locked up behind her, sticking the toothpick into the bottom crack of the door where the hinge was. It was a nearly undetectable way she could see if anyone had been in her room before she even opened the door. Lester had shown her the trick almost two years ago.

She climbed into the empty elevator, dropped her bag, and pulled on her khaki wind breaker. It felt like it was a thousand degrees outside but it hid her two custom made 45s in their respective shoulder holster. She also carried a .22 on her ankle. She took the elastic hair tie off her wrist and braided her hair in the mirrored doors in front of her as she listened to Dionne Warwick sing about the way to San Jose.

When the doors opened, none of the tourists in front of her had any idea that she was heavily-armed and could kill them in about thirty different ways. She walked out the door and found Jonesy waiting for her. He had been there every morning at 6:30 on the dot to pick her up and take her to her training.

Vegas Bonds and Security's building was twice as big as Rangeman; it was twenty floors of security specialists, bounty hunters, gyms, apartments and offices. Stephanie's crew had half a floor just for them. Her floor had a conference room for apprehension-planning, individual offices, and Stephanie even had her own secretary, Mya, who handled the files and cut the checks for the body receipts. So needless to say, she was flirted with and always had some kind of chocolate on her desk if the guys wanted to get paid that week.

Mya handed Stephanie her phone messages and files for that week as she passed by her desk on her way to her corner office. Everything was in earth tones, in an effort to try and stay cool in the summer when even the devil thinks it was too hot.

She called Jonesy to tell him of the change in her schedule, no sparring; only thegun range and then shopping. That was something else she had changed; now at least two people knew where she was at all times, usually Mya and Jonesy. She just didn't care who knew where she was or what she was doing anymore. It used to drive her crazy; like she hadn't had control over her life and all of her choices were taken away. Now she chose where she was going but she kept people informed of her movements. What they did with the information was up to them. She had even contemplated getting a permanent tracker installed and was still thinking about it.

Stephanie slipped the Fed Ex letter in her messenger bag, and headed out the door to the gun range. Today was sniper-rifle work; a lot of lying on the ground and sighting in the target. So she wouldn't get bored learningRam used to make her shoot designs into the targets, like hearts or smiley faces, which she still did to break up the monotony of target practice.

Jonesy walked in smiling. "Steph, Marcus has a surprise for you today. This is gonna be good! Grab your suit and rifle. Let's go."

She just gave him a blank look grabbed her gear and left with him. She learned the art of silence, that sooner or later the other person would say what is going on or you would find out on your own; there was no reason to waste your energy on something as inconsequential as guessing, or whining about the inevitable.

No one in Vegas would recognize the Stephanie that had lived in New Jersey compared to the one that lived Vegas. It was as if Stephanie's personality had been transplanted with that of Ranger's. She didn't chatter on incessantly, she never said more than she had to, she looked people in the eye, and she was the Boss with a capital B and had the skills and cojones to back it up.

Thirty minutes later, they stopped in the middle of the desert, nothing for miles in any direction. She sat waiting for the explanation. Jonesy looked over at her and thought again that she was the coldest woman he had ever met. It was like she was frozen, the ultimate ice princess. Beautiful to look at, but cold and emotionless. She was a badass for sure, and he thought of her like a sister,but he just couldn't picture her with a man in any capacity whether it was boyfriend, lover, one night stand or a husband. It would take one hell of a man to thaw her out.

"You have thirty minutes to be dressed and in position." He pointed to the south out of her window. "Marcus and a few people are coming in there with the target; you'll have to make four shots in twenty minutes without being detected. He'll have a three man team on the ground, but they can't actively hunt you, they can only go where he directs them. He will be stationary on the truck. You'll see him through your scope. Keep moving closer. The closer you get to him, the better. The closest anyone has ever gotten is twenty yards before he spotted them. For every shot without detection, he's giving you a bonus of twenty-five thousand cash, so you have the opportunity to make a hundred thousand cash in about an hour. Oh yeah, before I forget, after this is when he'll give you your nickname. Good luck Stephanie, you're gonna need it." He smirked as she climbed from the SUV with her suit and her sniper case.

Stephanie waited until he turned around to strip out of her tank, cargos, and boots. She pulled her ghillie suit out of the bag, grabbed some dirt from between her feet and threw it onto the suit as a precaution to any foreign scents. She wrapped a khaki bandana around the top and sides of her head to keep any wisps of hair out of her eyes. She opened the brushed steel case and slipped on the desert camo fingerless gloves that she stored in the top lid netting. She had five different colors so she was prepared for any type of environment.

It took her no more than four minutes to put her weapon together. She pulled the trigger to make sure the action was smooth, and then grabbed the magazine holding the twenty rounds of fifty caliber ammunition for her rifle. The khaki color of the rifle was already perfect for where she was.

Stephanie grabbed some underbrush and started sticking it to different patches of her ghillie suit so she would blend with the ground cover. She slid on the khaki face mask and then the top of the ghillie suit and now she was a walking tumbleweed. She walked forward about fifty yards and dropped to the ground to wait for her target to get there and set up.

She didn't have to wait longer than ten minutes before she saw the plume of dust from the trucks coming down a dirt road in her Leupold scope. She counted five people in two vehicles. They stopped about fifty yards from her position, set up a steel pole with a bullseye attached to a steel plate. She could see it swinging as they were getting it stabilized. So no ricochet, she thought. Cool.

Marcus grabbed a bullhorn and yelled for the three man team to get into position. Four minutes later, he yelled that the clock had started: she had twenty minutes to make four shots without him detecting her position. She sighted in the target, took a deep breath, and half way through blowing it out, she squeezed the trigger.

_PING_!

"Holy Fucking Hell!" Marcus yelled looking at the target. "That was fast."

He looked through the binoculars actively searchingfor some sign of her. He hit the mic on his neck.

"Come forward ten yards, twenty degrees to the right. Sniper at your feet." He watched as his crew leader followed his directions, but they radioed back nothing was there.

_PING_!

"Shit!"

Marcus and the four others were searching and searching for something to give away her position; that bullet had been closer and from a different direction. He sent the guys to the left about ten more yards forward. Still nothing.

_PING_!

"They are good," the last man on the left murmured to his companion as they allkept searching and Marcus sent his crew different places looking for her.

_PING_!

"FUCK!" Marcus screamed and jerked up the bullhorn. "OK, that's four in less than twenty! Come Out!"

Stephanie stood up twenty feet from the trucks and slipped the ghillie helmet off, leaving the skin cap still on so all anyone could see was her eyes.

"Sonofabitch! How did you get this close to me, Sniper?" Marcus yelled at her, leaning over the roof of the truck to see her ghillie suited body better.

"By being a sneaky bitch!" Stephanie yelled back to Marcus and finally pulled the face mask off letting her braid and face breathe fresh air. Ghillie suits were not known for being very breathable and got hot and stuffy fast.

Stephanie recognized three of the five men: Marcus, Jonesy, and Bullseye, who ran the gun range. She had no clue who the other two were, but she had a feeling she was about to find out. Her spidey sense was making her skin crawl, not in a serial killer way, but not in a good way either.

"Azrael, that's what we'll call you, The Archangel of Death, Azrael. It was said that he was the most beautiful and the most deadly. Yeah, that's definitely you," Marcus announced smirking at her.

"If I'm going to be known as an archangel, I'll need wings. Who knows the best tattoo place around here?" Stephanie yelled as she climbed out of her ghillie suit completely and stood there in her olive green bra and boy short panties.

Marcus thought if he had a camera he could have made a fortune off of that one photo of Stephanie in her army green bra and panties, combat boots, skin glistening with sweat and a sniper rifle slung across her back with her ghillie suit dangling from her hand. Lord help whoever screwed her over in the future because he knew she wouldn't mind digging a hole in the desert to bury a body.

Two hours later, at noon, found them all watching as Stephanie had realistic angel wings outlined across her whole back while she was texting the pic that Jonesy had taken of her that Marcus wanted to take. She sent it to Ram with her synopsis of what went on today and her new nickname. She even told him that he could give the pic to Lester as long as he promised not to have it blown up on a billboard.

By four o'clock, the outlining was done and two of the tattoo artists had simultaneously shaded the wings on each shoulder. They wouldn't tattoo anymore for the next two weeks; they wanted her to heal some before they finished. She talked to them about a very specific tattoo she wanted done on her hand. It wrapped her wrist to the bottom of her palm and then banded around her thumb. She pulled out one of her 45s and showed how the design from the gun would be continued into the tattoo.

Bulls-Eye and Stephanie spent over an hour talking about the bomb dog she had ordered from Germany, Hans. Bulls-Eye had a dog from the same breeder/trainer when he was an EOD officer, Explosive Ordinance Officer in Afghanistan, named Gretel, and teased Stephanie about getting a dog named Hansel so they could breed them.

As Stephanie, Marcus, Jonesy, and Bulls-Eye walked out of the Five Aces Tattoo Studio, Ranger was walking into his seventh floor apartment, just back from Boston.

Something I Can Never Have by Flyleaf (cover of NIN)


End file.
